<p>You got a federal loan and work-study. You wouldn’t have gotten that work-study money if you had no need. You had need, so you got that. If the loan is subsidized, then that is also need-based aid.</p>
<p>I don’t think you’re explaining the situation quite right.</p>
<p>What school is this.</p>
<p>And, there is no federal law that says that a CSS school must default to FAFSA when awarding its OWN money. Certainly, HYPS don’t do that.</p>
<p>Edited to add…I see that the school is Boston College. Lots of bad FA stories about BC. I would guess that the school doesn’t really want to take into acct the private school education for younger kids, so the FA officer is just saying that they must use the higher FAFSA amount. That may be an internal BC rule…not a federal law. Either the FA officer is misinformed or just thinks you won’t know any better.</p>
<p>I see that both two schools my son is considering are on this list but they determine need on an “institutional methodology” but that methodology came up with a 10k spread on EFC and I still can’t figure out why. One college, efc is 47, other college the estimated Need is at 37. I have no idea why the difference.</p>
<p>It makes me think that while two schools can both say they meet demonstrated need based on the EFC, they can arrive at a figure that is very different.</p>
<p>“institutional methodology” means that each institution adapts the methodology according to its own notion of what should be taken into account. Thus the results from one institution to another can vary wildly. If you really truly want to know how CollegeA came up with 47k and CollegeB came up with 37k, it is perfectly fine for you to pick up the phone and call them. The financial aid officers can talk you through their particular version of the formula. However, unless there is something that they got wrong, or that has changed since you filed the Profile, there is little reason to expect that CollegeA will drop 10k off what they expect your family to pay.</p>
<p>Thanks NewEnglandMom, I will defnitely use this lists next year when my other children are applying. I wish I would have known about the list for child number 1. I definitely would not have had S apply to Boston College. I hope future kids applying to Boston College and similar schools don’t make the same mistake as I and probably many others have made.</p>
<p>The federal law makes sense. They don’t allow anyone to get federal funds for need, when they are not needy by federal formula. So if a school’s forumula shows need, but FAFSA does not, then it’s quite simple; school can give what such a student what their aid formula dictates and subtract out what would have been covered by federal funds since they are not permitted to give those. Doing that would not mean giving anymore than they would if the federal formula had come out exactly to what the institutional formula did. If they really wanted to be generous, they could meet need the way they define it. </p>
<p>So the law does not say you cannot give aid beyond when FAFSA is lower than PROFILE. It just takes federal funds out of the picture. There is some exception to this for PELL, however, I think, so all a kid would lose out on is subsidized loans and work study.</p>
<p>*mom2 - there IS a federal law, this is not just an internal BC rule or something that the BC FA officer is “just saying”. *</p>
<p>If you reread my post, I said: *And, there is no federal law that says that a CSS school must default to FAFSA when awarding its OWN money. Certainly, HYPS don’t do that.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>I don’t think there is a federal law that says a college can’t give INSTITUTIONAL aid (I’m not talking federal aid) when FAFSA is higher.</p>
<p>If there were such a law, then HYPS couldn’t do what they do. **Plenty of kids at HYPS have FAFSA EFCs of $60k+ but they are still awarded HYPS money. **</p>
<p>Very sorry, I wrote my last post in a hurry. cpt and mom2 explain it correctly (and I did so on the earlier thread, but read and posted too quickly today). The law (although it may not be followed by some schools) is that if a school goes with the lower IM EFC, then the FA package cannot contain Federal Work/Study or Federal subsidized loans. Some of the “full need met” schools use institutional loans and/or institutional campus jobs to substitute for the Federal aid, but many schools are unwilling to do this and instead default to the higher FAFSA EFC - certainly not an equitable solution, to follow one formula for probably 90+% of the students and another formula (which they themselves view as less accurate and less equitable) for the rest. Kudos to those few schools who apply the same methodology to everyone.</p>
<p>That’s what I get for speed-reading and posting in haste - I usually know better. Ack.</p>
<p>I don’t think there is a federal law that says a college can’t give INSTITUTIONAL aid (I’m not talking federal aid) when FAFSA is higher.</p>
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<p>As others have correctly pointed out, the school cannot give out federal NEED BASED aid AT ALL if the school uses the higher Profile EFC. The school could award the full $5500 of UNSUBSIDIZED Stafford eligibility ($5500 freshman annually). That is it. The focus of a discussion with a higher-up in that aid office would be that the family would appreciate a review of the file to see if institutional funds can be used for $14,500 of the $20k gap, and unsub for the remainder. If the school has a policy that does not allow this, the administrator can clearly explain. Otherwise, it is possible that OP might be successful in an appeal … meaning, it is worth a try.</p>